Last Minute Advent Activities for Late (and Lazy) Moms… like me

I had the best of intentions, you guys. I was going to do daily Advent activities with my kids and drive home the story of Christ’s birth. They were really gonna get a LOT of JESUS in December, believe me. The maximum amount of Nativity Story-telling and Christ-child worshiping was going to HAPPEN.

But it didn’t.

Somehow the month ran away with me and now we are just one week out. Ugh.

I don’t want to give up just yet. I really would like to spend some time as a family reading the Christmas story and focusing on Jesus before opening presents. We may not have been studying scripture for 25 days leading up to the holiday, but we can still make this week count.

I’ve mentioned before that my favorite Advent study for kids is Truth in the Tinsel. I purchased it 3 years ago, and we are still able to use it as the kids grow!

Honestly, knowing that I already owned a super easy devotional with activities for kids is half the reason I knew I could do something with the kids. There’s no way I have the time or energy to do something super complicated (or even moderately complicated) at this point. No way, man.

With three small children, it can be super chaotic doing crafts and reading a devotional and managing everyone’s hands and shushing loud interruptions. It’s rough, so I try to follow a plan (like Truth in the Tinsel) and keep is SUPER simple.

Yes, even Truth in the Tinsel has 25 daily Advent readings and activities, but I don’t have to do them all!

Here’s my plan for a slimmed down version of Truth in the Tinsel for the week before Christmas:

2)I’ll be using one of the bibles we already have for our daily readings. If you don’t have a kids bible you LOVE, here are my recommendations (you can still order them in time for Christmas OR grab them on Kindle to read today)!

3)I’ll be doing an alternate schedule. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do the “Just The Basics” schedule that’s already listed at the end of the book, or something like this, that covers the major characters:

Day 4 – Gabriel

Day 5 – Mary

Day 9 – Joseph

Day 18 – Angels

Day 19 – Shepherds

Day 22 – Wise Men

Day 24 – Cross

I like the idea of going over the main characters, especially the ones present in their toy nativity set, so they can use the toy characters reenact the story over and over.

** WAIT! What if I can’t do 7 days?! What if I can only do a few? **

It’s still totally worth it. Here are my suggestions for scaling back and making time for advent study in the days leading up to Christmas:

1 Day Schedule – Choose a variety of the printable ornaments to lay out for the kids to color while you read the entire story. As you read the story, have them find the ornament and show it to you. Then, when you are all done, have the kids retell the story as they place the ornaments on the tree!

That’s it. That’s all. I’m not adding anything else. I’m just going to print out the printable ornaments for the kids to color, read a little of the Christmas Story, and THAT IS IT. I can actually do that. No matter how close to Christmas it is.